Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

http://www.freejazzblog.org/2015/06/ornette-coleman.html

I have two Ornette Coleman stories.

1) In 2003 or 2004, I saw him on 7th Avenue & 36th or 37th Street, near his apartment, & ran across the street in total fanboy mode. He asked me if I played an instrument, & I told him I’d played the trumpet for awhile, but given it up to stay focused on writing. He said, “You should have kept at it, ‘cause you can make the same mistakes either way.”

2) When I interviewed him at his apartment in 2009, two ladies who lived in the building stopped by to visit. There was no occasion that I knew of, but they’d brought chocolate cake, and Ornette cut me a slice. It was great. Before I left, he gave me autographed sheet music for two pieces, and signed my BEAUTY IS A RARE THING booklet.

Great stories both

RIP

yes, great stories

much love and good feeling to ornette's loved ones

Classic

this is making me very sad

i wonder if there will be a tribute show somewhere in chicago

if anyone knows, please let me know.

i've probably listened to ornette as much or more than any other musician in the past decade

1) In 2003 or 2004, I saw him on 7th Avenue & 36th or 37th Street, near his apartment, & ran across the street in total fanboy mode. He asked me if I played an instrument, & I told him I’d played the trumpet for awhile, but given it up to stay focused on writing. He said, “You should have kept at it, ‘cause you can make the same mistakes either way.”

So awesome.

RIP to the best.

2) When I interviewed him at his apartment in 2009, two ladies who lived in the building stopped by to visit. There was no occasion that I knew of, but they’d brought chocolate cake, and Ornette cut me a slice.

I love this one too, what a beautiful memory to have of someone.

Sadness w the gladness here: on Ornette last summer, at celebration of his music in Prospect Park:
http://robertchristgau.com/xg/music/coleman-14.php

he seemed very shaky at that show but he still played excellent

My friend John_W found Ornette with Grateful Dead (during "Space"):http://bit.ly/1QQh42Y

Just heard on NPR that today's Fresh Air will reprise interviews w Ornette, Denardo, and some of the musicians who played with them (think earlier announcement specified Haden and Cherry, but the news isn't yet on FA;s NPR or Twitter pages).

I noticed some Free Jazz naysayers upthread, is that a commonly held view among "free music" fans? Because I listened to it for the first time in years yesterday, and I'm always surprised how playful it is (and even danceable in my mind; must be the walking bass line in much of it.) I love how the composed themes pop up out of the skronk - and it's not really even all that skronky to me. Like, I can't hang with a lot of later period Coltrane and similar stuff, but I really love Free Jazz. RIP Ornette.

The only personal knock I have on the album Free Jazz is that is a little tentative, and sometimes it feels like guys waiting to solo and not really playing together, exactly. I mean this kind of me quibbling, like I'm not ever going to get rid of my copy of it and it's hard to dislike a record that has Ornette and Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard on it.

I dig the heavy Coltrane blowouts and I dig Ornette.

Also I haven't listened to it in a while so I might be talking out of my ass

I was listening to Body Meta this morning...I'm not sure what kind of music it is exactly (no-wave-jazz-funk?) but man it is so good

Listened to "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and "Tomorrow is the Question!" both I'd never heard before. Really great stuff! I don't know much about jazz but I like this.

Listened to "Shape of Jazz to Come", "Body Meta" and "Dancing in Yr Head" last night... and some James Blood Ulmer for good measure!

I listened to Body Meta too! Never knew it existed until yesterday, I'd never seen a copy. Yeah, no wave jazz funk is about right.

It's nuts

I remember one summer being obsessed with Body Meta and the first Contortions record....haha I was really popular at parties

I've never really been able to get a grip on the Prime Time records.

That seems to be the point of them, in some ways?

Didn't know this existed until today, and it's pretty fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUvI297Eig

This quote (from the Times obit) is very harmolodic.

“One of the things I am experiencing is very important,” he said in his Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech. “And that is: You don’t have to die to kill, and you don’t have to kill to die. And above all, nothing exists that is not in the form of life, because life is eternal with or without people, so we are grateful for life to be here at this very moment.”

love that speech
Ornette's remarks after getting his lifetime achievement grammy

aw man I was wondering why this had 60 new answers

RIP

very #based acceptance speech

Would have loved to been there to take the tenor of the room when he finished the speech.

Or even the alto of the room

Ornette did appear briefly on the telecast as a presenter (after a cursory "here's the lifetime achievement award recipient, and here's why, in 30 seconds" video). iirc, he handed the Best New Artist award to Chris Brown.

Carrie Underwood actually!

Is all of his catalogue in print? Keep hoping that people's deaths will prompt companies to make sure that the good hard to get stuff reappears.
NOt sure on the state of the early-mid 70s electric stuff Body meta and Dancing In Your Head which seems to be viewed as near classic by a lot of people.
I think you can get an expanded Science Fiction which is pretty good.
Also just seen there's a Paris set from '71 that appears to be readily available on cd.

Anyway sad to see him go but glad to have seen him, even if it was only once 20+ years ago

Is all of his catalogue in print?

no way

A lot of Prime Time stuff has been hard to find forever, esp the Artists House and Caravan of Dreams stuff, not to mention "Of Human Feelings" which is awesome, but Island/Antilles bungled it

bungled it how?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLbTdhUF8Ac

Listening to "Shape" last night first thing that became clear was Yoko Ono basically does a deconstructive a capella version of Ornette Coleman on all her early records. They did this song together in 1968.

Tons of great stuff is out of print: Ornette at 12 and The Empty Foxhole (both on Blue Note); Crisis (on Impulse); all the Prime Time albums, I think; the '90s albums on Verve (Sound Museum: Hidden Man and Three Women, the duo album with Joachim Kühn, Colors)...hell, I think a lot of the original Atlantic albums are out of print individually, but now that the Beauty is a Rare Thing box is only like $40 there's really no reason not to just get that.

seems like ornette signed some pretty specific deals, post-atlantic -- might be his own estate that is responsible for getting those albums in print?

related, it's interesting to read his section in spellman's 4 lives in the bebop business --where he's presented as totally *not* the mystical sage he'd come to be in the later years.

Yeah, I remember Spellman's description of that ultra-boondocks tent show band the young OC toured in (Spellman had seen such shows first-hand, as a kid in ultra-boondocks Mississippi, I think). Coleman showed one of his colleagues some stuff he'd come up with, and got reported by the guy for trying to lead him astray, musically.
This just up: the Trio, of Golden Circle fame---OC, David Izenzon, Charles Moffet---Bremen '65, Paris '66:
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2372

Tons of great stuff is out of print: /Ornette at 12/ and /The Empty Foxhole/ (both on Blue Note); /Crisis/ (on Impulse); all the Prime Time albums, I think; the '90s albums on Verve (/Sound Museum: Hidden Man/ and /Three Women/, the duo album with Joachim Kühn, /Colors/)...hell, I think a lot of the original Atlantic albums are out of print individually, but now that the /Beauty is a Rare Thing/ box is only like $40 there's really no reason not to just get that.

Was Ornette At 12 Blue Note? I thought it was Impulse. Weirdly, I don't think his Impulse stuff has ever been reissued, in any format. Empty Foxhole is out of print, but Blue Note reissued it in the 90s and the CD shouldn't be too hard to find.

But yeah, Atlantic box is indispensable.

Was there any significance to the reissue of Beauty is A Rare Thing this year? Did it tie in with anything?
It just seems to have predated his death by about a month.

I feel extra angered by the guys who released the 'new' record without his permission. I wish he would have put out something after Sound Grammar, but obviously he didn't do anything he didn't want to.

Was there any significance to the reissue of Beauty is A Rare Thing this year? Did it tie in with anything?

No, I think it just got scooped up in Warner Music's recent series of (relatively speaking) budget priced boxes - they re-did Mingus's Passions of a Man not that long ago, too (which I just found out about this week).

The Fresh Air reprise is comprised of excerpts of an '87 interview with Ornette, with Haden and Cherry, apparently sep, then Ornette & Denardo in '97, or whenever Tone Dialing was released (bits of that and other albums are included). About 30 minutes in all, but good (room is reserved for a Christopher Lee interview and a Kevin Whitehead review of the new Michael Gibbs big band record with Bill Frisell, who sounds a lot more robust than usual, without losing his signature sound o course)
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/12/413914118/fresh-air-remembers-jazz-innovator-ornette-coleman
Tons of Ornette-related stuff in the NPR archives, but not seeing the original interviews.

Red Sox organist Josh Kantor:

@jtkantor 18h18 hours ago

2nd inning at Fenway: Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman," in memoriam.

Crisis was reissued on vinyl about 5 or 6 years ago in places like Spain and France and promptly disappeared and the reissues are probably just as hard to find as original copies. which doesn't really do anybody any good at all. i love that record.

i remember seeing Science Fiction in record stores all the time for years and now that i want one...

never even put out on cd in the u.s.? i don't think? what up with that?